


out of joy is sorrow born

by bluebacchus



Series: the verge of remembrance [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Depression, Eating Disorders, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Referenced cannibalism, Sad Ending, Sex, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Suicide Attempt, Visions in dreams, guilt shame and boners, most of it is Very Soft, poor communication, quite a bit of sex actually, sorry lady ann but sophia's taken your man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 23:08:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20536145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus
Summary: Jopson returns home in silence; Little visits a friend of a friend.





	out of joy is sorrow born

**Author's Note:**

> It is a known fact that Terror fans are the best people that exist in this world and I am feeling every bit of that. 
> 
> The title this time is borrowed from Poe's Berenice.
> 
> Another warning: This is going to get VERY SAD. I wasn't sure how to tag some things but I figured 'eating disorder' is simpler than 'psychogenic vomiting secondary to PTSD' which is technically what it is. And, uh, do note the Implied Suicide tag which should read Implied Suicides, plural. I can only promise that it's going to get happier. Sort of. 
> 
> Most importantly, it did not escape my notice that in the novel, Jopson has a wife and a son.

_Kalopsia_

_-noun. a condition, state or delusion in which things appear more beautiful than they really are_

_August 30, 1849_

The night is still. If Little listens hard enough at the open window, he can hear the tide lapping at the rocks that line the shore. Instead, he lays still, blanket bunched under his knee, while beads of perspiration form on his brow and drip down his neck. Four years ago he would have been uncomfortable, and perhaps gone to wet a cloth to lay across his forehead and cool him. Now, he cherishes the slow evaporation of sweat off his exposed skin and the marked contrast to the areas where Jopson’s skin covers his own, hot and damp with shared sweat.

The captain of the whaler that rescued them spoke with an undecipherable accent that reminded Edward Little of the time he sailed aboard _Vindictive _almost eight years ago. This time, however, instead of disembarking at the foreign harbour of Buenos Aires, the ship left them on the wind-swept shore of a fishing town in Newfoundland. With a wave of his hand, the captain disappeared into the throng of market shoppers and left them at the bottom of the gangway with Little leaning as heavily on Jopson as on his hastily-constructed wooden leg.

It was with great sorrow that he left the harbour. He felt as if he would never set foot on a boat again, though he knew it was unlikely. They had to return home eventually. For the first time, Little wondered if England was waiting for them, or if she had moved on, their memory forgotten as if hidden by the fogs on King William Island.

And even if she had not, what is waiting for them? Certainly not another assignment. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to sail again, even if he isn’t stripped of his position for his part in the failed expedition. And what is waiting for Jopson but an ailing mother and working-class drudgery?

As he thinks, Jopson shifts against him, nudging the healing stump just below his left knee as he tucks his cold feet under Little’s thighs. Edward pulls the quilt over them and tucks Jopson’s head under his chin. A trip to the barber was one of the first things Jopson insisted on after finding a place to sleep. His hair feels clean and smooth against Edward’s cheek and he indulges himself, burying his nose in the tidy black hair that smells as beautiful as it makes Thomas look.

“Are you sniffing my hair?” Jopson mumbles.

“Did I wake you?” Little asks, as Jopson reaches up to wrap an arm around Little’s neck. His fingers play with the ends of Little’s own freshly-cut hair.

“I was already awake. Just thinking.”

Little hums, half questioning and half satisfaction as Jopson smoothes both thumbs over the closely shorn sideburns Little favours, cupping his cheeks and bringing their foreheads together.

“About home. About you and me,” Jopson’s voice lowers until Little can barely hear him whisper, “I don’t want this to end, Edward.”

“We don’t have to return,” he whispers back. “We can stay here, you and me. Start over. A new life. We can stay here, in this cabin, where we’re safe and warm and together and…” he trails off, afraid he has said too much.

“And what? Become fishermen?” Jopson says with a wry smile.

But Edward is immune to his doubts. He lets his imagination run wild- a future of shared mugs of tea under a heavy quilt, waking each other with soft kisses in the morning, and a boat filled with tackle boxes and fishing line that they row out to sea, just far enough so that they can still see the lights of their cabin on the shore… it all materializes in front of his eyes.

“We can do anything, now, don’t you see?” He grasps Jopson’s shoulders and squeezes. “We’re free from the Navy, we’re free of England and the filth of London and class prejudice-“

“Is that it, then?” Jopson says, wriggling out of Little’s grasp and leaning back against the headboard. “You feel no obligation to return?”

“There’s nothing waiting for me. Everything I want is here, in this room.” He crawls up the length of Jopson’s body to kiss his forehead like he would every morning if they were to stay. Jopson’s lips intercept as Little withdraws, and he kisses him deeply, tongues meeting in Little’s mouth and Jopson uses Little’s unstable prosthetic to unbalance him and push him down into the mattress.

“Oh, Edward,” Jopson says, running his hands through the hair on Little’s chest, “I think you should know that I’ve fallen madly in love with you.”

“That might be the longest overdue confession anyone outside of the Church has ever heard,” Little laughs, but his heart swells and he pulls Jopson closer until their chests are flush and their lips hover only millimetres away. With each word Little whispers, his lips brush softly against Jopson’s.

“I love you with all my being, Thomas.”

_September 30, 1849_

“I have something to tell you,” Thomas says one night as their shared berth rocks and the swell of the sea carries them home.

“It can wait,” Edward says, running his tongue along the shell of Thomas’s ear as he rubs himself against the leg between his thighs.

“I fear I’ve waited too long already,” Thomas says, undeterred, and removes the delicious pressure on Edward’s groin. Edward whimpers at the loss, unsure of when he became so needy.

Edward follows him up as he leans away. Now sitting with Jopson in his lap, Edward can imagine all the new angles his hands could explore.

“I have someone,” Thomas says suddenly. “At home, waiting.” His guilt hangs heavy in the air; Edward can taste it filling his throat and it chokes him.

“Ah,” he says finally. There is nothing he can say, nothing worth saying that can encompass the conflicted betrayal he feels.

“But I love _you,_” Thomas says pleadingly. His eyes are bright and clear and earnest and Edward knows he will never refuse him anything.

“But it changes everything,” Edward says anyways.

“It changes nothing.”

Thomas kisses him, again and again, and Edward wonders what will happen when they reach shore. It was idiotic to think that Thomas wouldn’t have a girl back home, and selfish to assume that he would choose Edward over her. Edward, with his quiet obedience and adherence to class-based expectations; Edward, with his mutilated body stretched and starved and broken; Edward, with nothing but a quiet heart full of love and a tenuous Navy pension, could never be enough for someone like Thomas.

But Edward is a selfish man, so he pulls Thomas down to him and wraps his good leg around his back. As he welcomes him into the cradle of his hips, Edward releases his last threads of morality and lets himself drown in the sensation of Thomas filling him.

* * *

“What’s her name?” Little asks, after they’ve wiped the evidence of their lovemaking away and lay entwined on the wooden bed.

“Who?”

“Your girl.”

“My wife, you mean? Her name is Elisabeth.”

Little feels a stabbing pain in his chest when Jopson says the word ‘wife’. It makes him feel dirty.

“And Avery should be about seven by now.”

“Your son,” Little says, heart shattering in a thousand pieces.

Jopson nods. Little can’t see it, but he feels the movement of Jopson’s head where it lays pillowed on his chest.

“Do you-“

“Yes,” Jopson whispers, before kissing Edward silent, pressing his body down into the blankets covering the berth.

_Do you love her more than you love me,_ he was going to ask, before pleading with Jopson to run away with him, or to disappear somewhere where they would never have to part. Little has never felt so desperate to be loved before, so empty and wanting of affection, and in a way, he was glad Jopson cut off his question with the violent press of his lips. Despite their closeness over the last year, Little still falls back into his habit of hiding his vulnerability beneath the image he’s worked so hard to construct.

“I love you, Edward. I do. We’ll make it work, if you want it to,” Jopson whispers as he kisses along the length Edward’s good leg and slides an oil-slick finger into him. Little moans and pants against Jopson’s neck.

“I do,” he breathes into Jopson’s mouth. He repeats it, again and again, as Jopson slides into him and fills him again. It’s a pledge, a vow, and until they tumble over their climaxes together, Little believes it.

“I love you,” Jopson says again, scratching his fingernails across Little’s chest. He feigns sleep, minutes or hours later when Jopson reaches up to kiss his lips softly before settling his head against Little’s shoulder. “I love you,” he whispers again.

_How much? _Edward wants to say, but he can’t force the words to leave his mouth.

_October 9, 1849_

Edward takes Thomas against the small desk in their ship’s cabin with a violence that claws its way out of him. It manifests itself in the grip on Thomas’s hips that will leave bruises, in the bite marks that cover his shoulders, and in the relentless pounding of his hips that make Thomas whimper and thrust back against him.

He wants Thomas to feel empty without Edward inside him.

“Do you fuck your wife like this?” Edward whispers. He has Thomas’s ear between his teeth and it sounds more like a snarl than a question.

Thomas gasps and pushes back against him until Edward’s front is flush against his back, covering him like a blanket. Edward takes a hand from its position bracing himself against the desk to wander up Thomas’s chest, where it stills, feeling the frantic heart beat through his ribs.

“No,” Thomas moans, “just you. Just you.”

His voice breaks over the last word.

Edward’s hips stutter and he slows his thrusts as the guilt creeps up his spine. He has never been a rough lover, yet he is letting his own envy, his own _vice_, affect him so. He pulls out slowly, running gentle, soothing hands over the finger-shaped bruises that will appear on Thomas’s hips tomorrow. Thomas looks over his shoulder in concern, and Edward lets him turn in his arms, catching him before he sinks to his knees to grant Edward release with his mouth.

“I just want to see you,” Edward says. “Please let me see you.”

Thomas nods, standing on his tiptoes to tip his weight onto the desk. He kicks his trousers off one leg, which Edward catches and presses open-mouthed kisses against, wordless apologies against bare skin. Thomas is stretched open and wanting, and Edward wastes no more time before pressing into him again. He buries his face in Thomas’s neck to silence his sigh, and Thomas scrapes his teeth along the tendon in Edward’s neck that stands out in the harsh lantern light of the cabin. Edward begins thrusting again, losing himself in the warmth and familiarity of Thomas’s body, banishing the stabs of jealously that eat at his heart.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. His hands find their way to Thomas’s backside and pull him closer. “I wish I could give you the world.”

Thomas lets out a breath that might be a laugh or a sharp gasp as Edward changes angles inside him.

“You already have,” Thomas chokes out between whimpers. Edward has found the perfect angle to make Thomas come undone, and he drives his hips up, reaching as far inside as he can, as Thomas moans and wraps his legs around Edward’s waist in an effort to get him deeper. Edward’s thighs are shaking when Thomas clamps down around him and comes over Edward’s hand and his own belly. His legs are still locked around Edward’s waist when Edward finishes inside him, his cries stifled by Thomas’s mouth.

They’re still in the same position, foreheads pressed together as they catch their breath, when Thomas says, “Don’t you dare fuck me like that again.”

“Like what?” Edward says.

“Like it’s goodbye.”

_October 12, 1849_

“Of all the things I regret, joining the crew of _Terror_ isn’t one of them,” Thomas says one night. The rest of the crew has seen fit to leave them alone for a majority of the voyage; Thomas, who still manages to hear everything despite only being a passenger, told Edward the general belief was that the two mysterious Arctic survivors were either cursed or users of dark magicks, both of which warranted leaving them to their own devices so long as they stayed away from the rest of the passengers and crew. Edward thought of his dreams and wondered which of those two categories he would fit into.

“You aren’t old enough for regrets, Thomas.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. It simply depends on how foolish you were when you were young.”

“And you were a fool, I imagine?”

“Fool enough to rush into marriage between voyages. When I returned from Antarctica she was with child within two months. I never questioned the parentage.”

“Would it change your mind?

“About leaving with you?”

Edward nods. He is ashamed to ask and can feel the flush rise in his cheeks.

Thomas hasn’t looked as miserable as he does when he says, “No, I don’t think it would,” since he was dying at Rescue Camp.

Edward lets himself be held by Thomas for what he imagines to be the last time.

“Be his godfather, Edward? He doesn’t have one.”

Edward closes his eyes and tries to commit this moment to memory. It’s strange, he thinks, that this is the one thing he cannot accept. He teetered over the edge of cannibalism, murder, and sodomy, but it is adultery that makes him take a step back. He tries to imagine a future spent as Thomas’s “friend”, one who will no doubt become close with his son and with his wife and all the while be betraying their trust.

“I can’t imagine the torture of having you so close and being unable to touch you,” Edward says.

Thomas holds him tighter. “I know,” he whispers. “I know.”

* * *

That night, Edward dreams.

He dreams of Thomas most nights, but with Silna’s knowing glances and sinew-string shapes, he had been learning to differentiate dreams from the Dreams.

That night, Edward Dreams.

He sees Sir James Ross in deep discussion with a woman he suspects is Sophia Cracroft. He sees himself receiving an honourable discharge from the Navy. He sees Thomas alone in a dark, dirty room, leaning against the window in the dead of night. He sees the doors to the West Riding Lunatic Asylum shut, trapping the darkness inside before it leaks out into the day. He sees a body bleeding in a bathtub and when he wakes up, he knows what he must do to prevent these dreams from becoming their future.

_October 13, 1849_

They sit in relative silence, broken only by a comment about the warmth of the sun, as the train rolls its slow and steady path from Liverpool to London, where they will change for Portsmouth. Edward placed his greatcoat between them, arranging it so it appears carelessly tossed down, and they hold hands under the safety of the thick wool.

Edward would gladly tell the world to stuff it and let him cling to Thomas’s hand like a lifeline, had the vision of the lunatic asylum not been so fresh in his mind.

_It’s for the best,_ he thinks, as the conductor calls out for Euston and he rises to gather the small suitcase of belongings he had collected over the past two years.

“Shall I get us a car?” Thomas asks, following on his heels as he steps onto the platform.

“I can.” From this angle, all he can see is Thomas outlined against the moonlight in the dark and desolate room of his dreams.

* * *

For once in his life, Thomas Jopson feels confident that he won’t be left behind. When Edward disappears into the crush of travellers at the station, he leans against the wall and watches the light fog as it descends over London. He’s never liked London. It’s too loud, too busy, too dirty. It’s too far from the sea.

He can’t contain his smile when he sees Edward hurry back from the road, his limp only noticeable because Thomas knows to look for it. It may be an old habit as a steward, but he can’t help but feel proud of his lieutenant for overcoming so much.

_I’ll tell him,_ Thomas thinks, as Edward smoothes a hand over his sideburns. _Tonight, I’ll tell him how I can’t imagine life without him._

But Edward looks more worried than usual when he approaches and he takes Thomas’s arm when he extends it.

_I’m not an invalid,_ he used to grumble, stumbling over the rocky shores of Newfoundland, first with a crutch, then with a cane, and then without any aid.

_I know,_ Thomas would say, _I just want an excuse to have you on my arm. _That made Edward laugh most times, and he would walk close enough for their shoulders to bump together as they made their way back along the beach to their cabin.

But he takes Thomas’s arm without a word, leaning on him like a crutch. They arrive at the car to find their driver in conversation with a man feeding his horses apples out of his hand.

“Come on, then,” Thomas blurts out, though he already knows why Edward hasn’t let go of his arm.

“I’m not coming with you.”

“You _will_ be welcome, if that’s what you fear.”

“You have to go back to your family, Thomas.”

_You are my family,_ he wants to say, but Edward’s betrayal bites deep.

“You said you wouldn’t leave me,” Jopson says, words cracking before they leave his lips. “You promised.”

“You have a home waiting for you,” Little says. “I won’t keep you from it.”

Little turns to walk away and for the second time in his life, Jopson watches his future fade away into the fog.

_October 30, 1849_

It has been two and a half weeks and Little has not slept.

At first it was because he was kept busy by the constant prodding and probing for answers, the fight to deem him eligible for a Navy pension, and the constant appointments with his family’s physician who was as stoically impressed with Silna’s efforts in healing the wound as he was horrified by the seaside carpenter who made him a temporary wooden leg.

The swirl of questions (_Did it hurt? What happened to the ships? Where is Sir John? Did you have to eat your boots? Did you have to eat your crewmates?) _creates a hurricane in his mind and he lays awake each night staring at the ceiling and wondering if this fugue of thought was how Davey Leys spent his last days.

He thinks about Davey Leys a lot.

He’s too afraid to eat because of him. He’s too afraid to sleep. 

Sometimes Little wakes up from a fitful doze when he dreams of being smothered by a glove in the dark of the relentless polar winter. Sometimes he wakes up from the dreams he knows now are special; dreams of skeletons in lifeboats and Crozier in furs speaking Inuktitut and Jopson being handed a rope that he wordlessly ties into a loop. Always, he wakes reaching for a man who isn’t there, but whose name is on the tip of his tongue and the weight of his body a phantom pain over the hollow emptiness of his chest.

* * *

His sister brings home a paper-wrapped package that is beginning to bleed through the brown wrapper.

“It’s a welcome home gift from Mr. Gibson, the butcher,” she says.

Little feels sick at the familiar name. He was dead now, certainly. They were all dead.

He sits at the table, drinking his tea and letting his niece bang a spoon against the polished wood of new prosthetic leg. When only the dregs are left, he swirls them mindlessly.

His empty stomach rumbles, unsatisfied with the tea he has been drinking to replace every meal. It’s the only thing he can keep in his stomach.

He wonders if Thomas- if Jopson, he corrects himself- is having similar problems. Every part of him itches to write, to apologize, to attempt to explain the dreams and the fears and how he refuses to ruin another man’s life when he has an opportunity to return to some sense of normalcy.

He doesn’t, because he knows what Thomas will say.

_It doesn’t matter. I want you here._

“Are you still reading your tea leaves, Eddie?” his sister asks when she returns from the grocer. He sits in the same position he was in when she left.

“I wish I could,” he says. “Maybe then I’d know what I’m supposed to do now.”

He leaves the room before she unwraps the bloody slab of meat from its paper, already feeling the bile rise in his throat.

* * *

Mary brings a cup of tea and a stack of biscuits to his childhood bedroom, waking him from a dream where he watches, helpless, as Jopson toes off his socks and shoes and walks headlong into the violent swell of the ocean.

“Uncle Eddie, I brought you tea!” she says as she sets the tray down heavily on the nightstand.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” he asks, running a hand through his sweaty hair in an attempt to tame it. Jopson used to laugh, even in the perpetual gloom and darkness of winter, about the state of his hair in the morning. He would pull Little’s frost-covered Welsh wig off and mumble something about making him presentable, like an officer should be, before tossing the hat towards the fire and using his overgrown hair to pull him in for a kiss.

“Don’t be silly, Uncle. It’s already lunchtime.” She pulls an envelope out from under the cup of tea, wiping off the drops that spilled when she all but threw the tray down. “Mommy says this is from a special man.”

He hates himself for how eagerly he sits and grabs at the envelope, and he hates how disappointed he is when he finds a personally addressed letter from Sir James Ross.

_November 20, 1849_

“Come to bed,” Elisabeth says. The small room they share is on the north side of town where the rooms are smaller and cheaper and shabbier than what Jopson is used to, even compared to his stewards cabin on _Terror._

It’s too far from the sea.

He sits, filling his pipe for the fourth time that evening, next to the small window. He rests his forehead against the glass, craving the chill he had spent far too long trying to rid himself of. The smoke from his pipe makes the room hazy. He can barely see his wife through it, but it is nothing compared to the thick, oppressive fog that rolled through their camps on King William Island. No, the smoke is more like that from the fire he and Edward kept burning through the winter while they held each other under piles of wool in their isolated tent. Jopson can feel his hands begin to shake as he lights the pipe. He has to lift his head from the window to do so, and in doing so, he is transported back from his memories.

“Thomas,” his wife pleads, but once his pipe is lit, he turns away from her, finding a new spot where the ice on the window has not yet melted from the heat of his breath and the press of his head against the glass.

* * *

She didn’t recognize him when he came to the door. He hadn’t written; he doubted she still lived in the house he had rented for her and Avery with his first advance from the Discovery Service. It was down by the docks, close enough to hear the bustle of sailors and woodworkers and riggers going about their duties. Out the large front window, he could see the ships lined up in the distance. The night before he departed on _Terror,_ Jopson held Avery in his arms and told him he’d make a fine sailor one day, using the toddler’s arm to point out _Terror _and _Erebus_, sheltered in their docks.

He had to ask around to find her, first by the docks, then at the markets, then the post office. It was only the post master who had the guts to ask if he was a debt collector before offering up Elisabeth’s address.

He knocked before he realized he couldn’t remember what she looked like.

“Hello Elisabeth,” he said when the woman opened the door. The dark circles under her eyes made them look as sunken as his own. It took her a minute of awkward silence before she tentatively asked, “Thomas?” and opened the door to her room. The kettle began to whistle from its spot on the stove.

* * *

The awkwardness between them did not dissipate once he was inside.

“I thought you were dead,” she said without emotion.

“I thought I was going to die,” he answered, voice steady enough to cover up the memories and the twisting knife of his and Little’s parting. “Where’s Avery?”

Elisabeth let out a small sound that might have been a sigh or a sob, and poured the tea.

* * *

They sit in silence when they are together. She does not ask him about the voyage, or why he cuts his food into such small pieces, or when his pay will come through. He does not ask her about the death of their son, the man from the bank who comes to the door every week, or where she is going when she begins to pack her suitcase.

“I thought I was lonely when you were gone, Tom, but it doesn’t compare to how alone I am with you,” she says as she walks out the door, and Jopson lights another pipe and turns to the window to watch the snow fall, wishing he never left the Arctic. 

_November 26, 1849_

Sir James Ross had been kind enough to extend him an invitation to stay in his London apartments and, though Little wanted desperately to refuse, he thought perhaps the company might do him some good.

To his surprise, Sir Ross left him alone for days, not allowing him the chance to thank him for the invitation yet run away back to his sister’s house where she would, no doubt, poke fun at his ability to run away despite only having one leg.

It’s a Monday when Sir Ross appears at breakfast, Sophia in tow. The last week had been full of breakfasts eaten alone and thrown up later. The presence of Sir James and his wife is not much of an improvement, Little finds. He tells them the lies Francis insisted on. Watching the former Miss Cracroft’s face grow pale, Little feels a sick sense of satisfaction as he elaborates on the progression of scurvy. He can see her imagine it as it happens to Francis, and part of him wants to tell her that he would still be alive if she had married him.

Once Ross begins to share meals with him, Little finds it harder and harder to escape once the decadent food begins to force its way up his throat. Ross is in the middle of a story (_one that would rival Fitzjames’s, no doubt_, he thinks with amusement before he remembers Francis’s agony over the other man’s death) when Little feels the meal begin to churn inside him. He has not eaten any of the meat placed in front of him, but he cannot escape the smells. The smell of roast pork hangs over the room and he is back in the tent, smothering Davey Leys and cutting him into pieces small enough to cook. He looks pleadingly at Sophia, and she catches his panicked look before he opens his mouth to excuse himself and vomits all over the lace tablecloth.

* * *

The last six days had been spent holed up in his room, cradling a pillow against his chest and wondering if he had made a mistake.

_It’s for the best,_ he tells himself every night when the squared corners of the pillow begin to feel more like shoulders and he has to pin his arms under himself to keep them from reaching up to brush away the lock of hair that is always falling across Jopson’s forehead.

Sometimes he imagines Thomas (_his Thomas)_ abed with his wife, child fast asleep in the next room, making love furtively under warm blankets. Sometimes he imagines what it is like, to be married to Thomas, to have a claim over him that no man, no matter how high ranking in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, could ever overrule. During the daytime, Little is a better man and envies Elisabeth. At night, alone and restless in his bed, he hates the woman. He hasn’t slept through the night without Thomas next to him since Rescue Camp. There’s a selfishness to his hatred that he can only barely bring himself to acknowledge- Elisabeth had survived separation from Thomas for _four years; _Edward had been without him for barely over a month and he feels as though his world has ended.

Sir James did not know Little before and therefore has no healthy image to compare his sunken features to, but he still asks over breakfast if he has been sleeping well.

“Truthfully, sir, not well at all. I’m unused to the luxury of a bed,” he says with an attempt at a laugh.

“I hear you, Lieutenant,” Sophia says. Her voice sounds like crystal shattering. “At night, you pace the halls for hours before leaving the house completely.”

“Ah,” Little says, “I apologize if my restlessness keeps you awake, Lady Sophia.”

“Where do you go?” she asks.

Little does not want to answer her. He knows that she will follow him tonight if he does, breaking the silence of his thoughts with her crystal voice and small, soft hands when all he craves is to hear the explosive cracking of the ice while tracing his fingers over darker hair on darker, rougher skin made pale by darkness.

“Some men, my dear,” Sir James offers in lieu of Little’s silence, “are not content to settle. Even now, I’m certain Lieutenant Little longs to return to the sea.”

Little gives a nod of gratitude to Sir James and drops his gaze to his untouched plate. He is silent for the rest of the meal.

* * *

He has lost about half the weight he had put on after being rescued by the Netsilik. He eats only fresh fruit and vegetables, savouring the crunch between his teeth and the sweet juices of the stone fruits, which he lets run over his chin while he sits in the bath. Little is sitting in the bath now, water heated and brought up two flights of stairs by Sir James’s servants while he waited, fingers brushing over the soft fuzz of a peach that Sophia had somehow procured for him. The fuzz of the fruit feels nothing like the fuzz of Jopson’s stubble against his hand, but it is as close as he has felt since their parting. When the last of the servants leave, Little thanks them and undresses quickly, stopping to look at his body, wasted of muscle, and the spot where his leg ends at the knee. He is startled at how quick the wooden leg has become a part of him. More often than not, he forgets to remove the straps holding it in place when he strips for the bath and is forced to wrestle with the leather belts, naked, on the bed.

It does not escape his memory that the last time he was naked on a bed he was not alone.

With the leg off, he reaches to steady himself on the edge of the basin and lowers himself into the hot water, making sure he has his soap and razor close at hand.

His fate has been decided from the moment he turned away from Jopson at the train station. _It was a mistake,_ he thinks,_ to let him go._ He is the only man left on this side of the world who could possibly understand the nature of Little’s affliction, the guilt and shame that hang over his head at every moment. Jopson had shared in it, taken his burden of terrible secrets as his own and eased Little’s suffering with words and hands and tongues. He never should have asked that of him.

But yet, had he known of his lover’s wife and child waiting in Portsmouth, Little doubts he would have done things differently. The sheer agony of _want _was as painful as his empty stomach and heavier than the weight of his conscience after murdering Davey Leys in his eternal non-sleep. He leans back in the tub and wonders if it is possible to die from unrequited love, like a fish if it stops swimming.

_Is it really love?_ he foolishly asks himself, rubbing the bar of soap over his body under the water. Each trace of the cloth that follows the soap answers his question.

As he lathers the soap around his toes, he remembers how Jopson peeled his wet sock back gently from his remaining foot, hands warming the cold, white skin beneath the sodden fabric. _We’re burning this,_ he had said, tossing it over his shoulder into the corner of their shared lodgings in Newfoundland.

He scrubs the soap over his calf, letting the cloth mimic the massaging motion of Jopson’s hands when the cold and the hunger got to be too much and his legs began cramping in the middle of the night.

He switches legs, inspecting the scarred and stretched skin over the stump at his knee. A painful memory, and one he barely remembers and had Jopson recount to him when they were finally left alone in Silna’s snow house.

“You’re a terrible liar, Edward,” Jopson had apparently said when he found him, dragging him out of the snow and into their tent, “and a stupid, stupid man.”

“I love you,” he had answered, and then, according to Jopson, fainted as blood continued to pulse out of his burnt and bleeding leg.

“You tried to cauterize the wound by sticking it in the fire, you terrible, stupid man,” Jopson told him in the snow house. He punctuated most this story with insults which Edward had found oddly affectionate.

Jopson explained to him then that he had to bandage the wound with his own smallclothes and was, in fact, naked under his outer clothes and slops.

“It would have been quite a surprise for you and your wandering hands, had you not been bleeding to death from your own botched attempt at hunting.”

It was another ten months before Jopson told him the rest, safe and warm in a sailor’s cabin in Newfoundland.

“Of course I know what you did,” he said. “And why you did it.”

“If I didn’t, we’d be dead.”

“You nearly died anyways, you great bloody idiot.”

“But you didn’t,” Little had said.

Jopson shook his head and sat up in their shared bed, pulling the blankets away from Little’s chest.

“Have you ever stopped to think about how selfish your self-sacrificing nature truly is?”

Little sat up, bare chest prickling with goosebumps. He left his hands folded in his lap. “I don’t understand, Thomas.”

“You can’t claim that you did it for me, not when I made it clear that I’d rather die beside you than survive without you.”

“Thomas, I couldn’t-“

“You _could._ You just didn’t. You’re so obsessed with proving yourself to be a better man that you never think about what _you_ want. Sometimes, it’s more courageous to take what you want than to abstain.” Jopson turned then. His eyes shone against the light of the moon.

Little felt a rush of saliva flood his mouth. He swallowed. “Are we still talking about my leg?”

Jopson shook his head, and Little reached out to swipe away the lock of hair that fell across his forehead. He caught Little’s hand, and guided it to the top button on his nightshirt. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I am.”

He made love to Thomas that night for the first time. It was long and slow, and he took everything Thomas gave. He left no sliver of skin untasted, no curve or valley of his body unmapped. After a single night, Little could draw a map of Jopson’s body better than he could trace out the Arctic maps he had studied for years. Sliding into him, coaxed open by his fingers and tongue (to Jopson’s initial horror and later delight), was the greatest satisfaction of Little’s adult life. He couldn’t imagine the overwhelming pleasure of feeling Jopson clench hot and tight around his prick while his face relaxed into a look of bliss as he cried out and gasped and moaned being matched by anything. The Northwest Passage, elusive as she was, could never be as beautiful as the body of Thomas Jopson below him, falling apart in his arms as they rocked together, panting _yours _and _forever_ into each others’ mouths. 

Little lets the memory warm him as the bathwater grows cold. As he reaches for the razor, he wonders if he’s got it wrong again. If he had pushed, if he had insisted, maybe they never would have left Newfoundland. He would never have gotten on the train from Liverpool, never reported to his superiors in the Navy. He never would have gotten off the train at London. He never would have walked away from Thomas.

But he did all these things, and as he brings the razor down against the skin of his wrist, Edward Little imagines the cracking of the ice and the feel of dry, cracked lips against his own.

_December 5, 1849_

The wind blows the spray of the sea against him, soaking his face, his hair, his clothes. He’s not dressed for the biting December wind. It nips at his nose and at his sunken cheeks. He can almost see the salt gather in the curves of his eyebrows. The wetness in the air releases his hair from its pomaded hold, and a piece falls into his eyes. He doesn’t brush it away, though it obscures his vision. He hasn’t brushed the hair from his eyes in months. It’s a job he is stubbornly reserving for Edward’s hands; the brush of his own across his brow, no matter how gentle, feels foreign and brings forth too many memories from _before._

He is a different man now. There is no more _before. _Not after what he’s had. Not after what he’s lost. _I should have stayed, _he thinks, not for the first time. He toes his shoes and socks off on the rocky beach and walks into the ocean.

He does not have a _before. _He does not want an _after. _

**Author's Note:**

> I chill at bluebacchus.tumblr.com or @aumerled on twitter if anyone wants to cry about the Peglar Papers to a sympathetic ear


End file.
